Learn about Nevada's history and available records in this research guide that includes a map and bibliography.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Nevada's history is far more compressed than that of its Southwestern neighbors. The outside world didn't pay much attention to Nevada until the 1833-to-1834 expedition of John C. Fremont, in which he discovered Lake Tahoe. But that began to change with the 1847 arrival of Brigham Young in Utah and the 1849 discovery of gold in California. Nevada came under US control with the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Most of Nevada became part of the new Utah Territory in 1850, with the southern tip assigned to the New Mexico Territory. The first permanent European-American settlement in Nevada was established in 1851 at Mormon Station, 13 miles south of what would soon become Carson City. That same year, gold was discovered at Dalton.

With the 1859 gold and silver find, dubbed the Comstock Lode, Nevada jumped onto the fast track to settlement and statehood. Virginia City sprang up almost overnight. A separate Nevada Territory was established in 1861, the same year journalist Mark Twain arrived in Carson City, beginning an adventure he'd dramatize in Roughing It (1872). Statehood came in 1864.

But bust soon followed boom, and Nevada slid into a depression that saw its population decline by a third from 1880 to 1900, when gold was found at Tonopah.

What most think of as modern Nevada began in 1927 with the re-legalization of gambling and the six-week divorce law. Soon Reno and Las Vegas were "wide open" cities. In 1941, the first hotel opened on what became the Las Vegas Strip.

COUNTY MAP
(click to enlarge)

RESEARCH TIPS

The Nevada Guide to Genealogical Records by Diane E. Greene can point you to the sources of records.

In Nevada, it's important to check the history and formation of the counties where you're researching; county names and boundaries changed often.